


look around and discover

by get_in_the_reboot_shinji



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Misunderstandings, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-18 22:25:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13691082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/get_in_the_reboot_shinji/pseuds/get_in_the_reboot_shinji
Summary: Valentine's Day sucks. Yugi's been keeping tabs.





	look around and discover

Valentine's Day sucks.

 

It's that time of the year again; a twelve-hour stretch of hell starts with a little ping from Yugi's phone at 6:30 am: _Today: Valentine's Day (worldwide)_ and ends, invariably, with him lying in bed, staring at his phone, or a pack of cards, or the ceiling, with just a little less faith in humanity than the day before. Anzu sorts contemptuously through a small mountain of chocolates, flowers and hearts; Honda side-eyes the girl at the library counter without working up the nerve to talk to her for the third year in a row; every girl in the class titters excitedly whenever any of the boys walk by. Yugi's homeroom teacher wears a pin with a heart on it, and you can't walk by an empty classroom or a quiet corridor without running into some doe-eyed freshman trying to stage a dramatic proposal.

 

Today, Yugi turns off his phone alarm, stares blearily at the notification and decides to just roll over and go back to sleep. It doesn't work, partially because he knows the pharaoh will just get concerned eventually and come wake him up, and partially because he set another alarm yesterday in case he decided to do exactly this. He lies still, thinking spiteful thoughts about his phone, the pharaoh, and the rest of the world at large for a little bit before he levers himself up out of bed.

 

The fuzzy ominous feeling the little notification gives him becomes tacit, awful reality when Grandpa winks at him over breakfast and asks if he has any special plans for today. Yugi chokes on his toast and scrambles for his bag and shoes, yelling that he's gonna be late.

 

"Partner, it's twenty minutes before we normally leave." The pharaoh peers over his shoulder, bemused.

 

"Shh," Yugi mumbles, and doesn't feel like elaborating. The game shop bell tinkles as he lets the door slam shut behind him. His laces are still undone and his collar is violently askew, so he has to sit on the step and fix himself up before he can make his escape proper. The spirit hovers beside him, staring with that expression of blank curiosity that usually precedes him being told all the answers to all his questions, promptly and in detail.

 

But Valentine's Day sucks and Yugi doesn't feel like being prompt or detailed, and eventually the pharaoh just sighs and reaches up to smooth Yugi's collar to where it should actually sit, a warm whisper over where his own fingers clumsily do the same. They both pull back a little. A beat passes, and then Yugi sighs dramatically and pulls himself up off the front step. He feels like he's entitled to that much.  


"C'mon," Yugi says, in his best world-wearied voice, and the pharaoh falls into graceful step beside him.

 

They should be a good bit earlier for school than any sane person would begin to arrive, but Anzu is mysteriously present and waiting, looking impatient, at the corner of the block.

 

"Hi!" she says brightly, and doesn't mention the time. Yugi does his best to sound less put-upon as he returns the greeting.

 

Anzu seems a little wound up. She bounces on her heels as they walk, a weird mix of enthusiasm and tension tagging her steps, and she keeps sneaking glances at the puzzle. Yugi thinks maybe his uniform is still out of place, but on closer inspection it looks fine.

 

After maybe the third time Yugi catches her looking, she nearly trips over the curb and faceplants onto the road; Yugi thinks, _ah._

 

"The pharaoh's out and about today," he points out, hooking a thumb over his shoulder to where the spirit is peering anxiously at Anzu's shoes, probably wondering if her laces, too, are undone.

 

"Oh!" She starts a little, then plasters on a brilliant smile and gives a little wave in the direction Yugi's pointing. Despite the fact she can't see him, the pharaoh gives a little wave back. His bemused smile makes a smooth reappearance, and a little blush gathers high on Anzu's cheeks, and Yugi suddenly, vehemently, feels a great appreciation for those discarded, unappreciated girl-number-two childhood friend characters in shoujo manga. He resists the urge to sigh loudly and cradle his head in his hands; the day has barely started yet.

 

"Would you like to have a chat?" he says instead, as brightly as he can manage.

 

 "U-uh, sure -" Yugi doesn't let her finish, pushing the spirit to the front of his consciousness. He takes a petty pleasure in the look of bewilderment on the pharaoh's face as he returns to the puzzle.

 

 

 

 

 

\----

 

 

 

 

 

There is a small mountain of roses and scented stationery on the rubber mat below Anzu's locker. Pink envelopes and candy, cute pens and errant petals and individually wrapped chocolates cascade downwards as she roots around in the back in the vain hope of finding her shoes.

 

The pharaoh, who Yugi is quite contented to let take his place for the moment, stands elbow-to-elbow with Jounouchi and Honda, face plastered with the same expression of awe and horror that any newcomer to Domino High on Valentine's Day inescapably ends up adopting. Honda and Jounouchi find this ritual endlessly entertaining, and are having the time of their lives.

 

"Oh," the pharaoh says. "Are those - all - for..."

 

"Yep!" Jounouchi elbows him cheerfully. "We're gonna be muchin' on free candy for weeks!"

 

"Look," says Honda thoughtfully, "is that note written on paper _made of_ flower petals?"

 

It certainly appears to be. Yugi has a sudden, vivid flashback to about two weeks ago, when a boy from the class over came up to him at lunch to ask if he knew if Anzu preferred geranium or camellia pulp. It all makes sense now.

 

The pharaoh, looking a little shell-shocked, is staring at Anzu as if she might provide some answers. Anzu, however - Yugi knows from experience by now - is in a place far, far away; her eyes have kind of glazed over as she scrapes away at the back of her overfull locker.

 

"I can't find my shoes," she says, a note of resigned despair creeping into her voice.

 

"You could wear these - _beautiful_ \- embroidered slippers," Honda suggests, modelling them gleefully on his hands like oven mitts. She stares at him in desperation; Jounouchi snickers.

 

"We have five minutes before class starts," says the pharaoh, briefly tearing his eyes away from the monstrous pile of pink accumulated on the floor. "Do you want - "

 

Anzu shakes her head in resignation and disappears to go borrow a pair of guest shoes, an air about her like that of a condemned woman. Yugi thinks he hears her mumble "I _hate_ today," as she leaves. _You have no idea_ , he thinks glumly.

 

 

 

 

 

\----

 

 

 

 

 

The spirit is staring at his teacher's lapel.

 

"She really _is_ wearing a heart pin," he says wonderingly. "Everyone here is very ...involved in this holiday."

 

Jounouchi, miraculously finding a way to sneak in five minutes late (Yugi knows for a fact that they walked to class together) stubs his toe on his desk, and the girls in the back erupt into giggles. _They need some excitement in their lives_ , Yugi scrawls in the margin of his book. The pharaoh looks doubtful.

 

Morning classes are a blur of unfinished homework and restless chatter, and even when his English teacher decides that they'll just be revising what they've done the lesson previous Yugi can't find it in himself to be happy about it. It's going to be a bad day; at least he's not in denial about it.

 

He remembers a couple Valentine's back in junior high; back when he still had his optimism, or at least enough of it to bring Anzu flowers. Once he even managed to work up the nerve to give them to her, too. The nights after had been, among all his post-Valentine's slumps, among the most unpleasant.

 

At least, he reflects, doodling idly at the bottom of his page, it's nicer to be standing next to Honda and Jounouchi, watching Anzu despair quietly at this year's ridiculous offerings. True, they're not much good as moral support, but it's better to be an amused friend than a jilted lover, offering up scented erasers and flower-petal paper. A little better.

 

The pharaoh is just as unusually restless as everyone else today, apparently. He phases in and out of visibility, hovering over Yugi's shoulder, staring out at the teacher, the loud mass of students, the window. It's kind of uncharacteristic, and Yugi suspects he has ulterior motives. Something rubs him the wrong way about it.

 

As the teacher drones on about the past participle in exactly the same way he did yesterday (Yugi has the notes to prove it) Yugi catches the spirit staring over at Anzu's neatly-organised desk. He seems... intent, and his face is blank. This time, Yugi really does heave a little sigh. The pharaoh whips around to look at him, curious, and Yugi, probably looking like a crazy person, just makes a shooing gesture in Anzu's general direction. Maybe he does look like a crazy person, because the spirit looks at him oddly for one long, drawn-out second.

_You're meant to be the one who_ doesn't _think I'm crazy_ , Yugi scribbles dejectedly underneath his doodles, but the pharaoh has already turned away. He hovers over Anzu's desk, inspecting first her notes and then her expression, and Yugi thinks: it already _is_ a bad day.

 

 

 

 

 

\----

 

 

 

 

 

There's a couple making out in the stairwell he usually eats lunch on. It's barely one o'clock, so it seems a little bit early to be entangled in each other's arms, mashing teeth in a public corridor, but there it is. The girl pulls back and gives Yugi the evil eye, as though _he's_ the gross, unwelcome presence in the place where _she_ normally eats with her friends, and Yugi, resigned, turns tail and heads off to find where everyone else has run off to.

 

"Is that something people normally do here?" asks the spirit, sounding a little alarmed.

 

Yugi, already in a bad mood, is loath to unhunch his shoulders and turn his head, but from the corner of his eye the pharaoh looks wide-eyed and... is he blushing? It's such a rare sight that it throws Yugi for a loop for a second. He can count the number of times he's seen those little dashes of colour on the pharaoh’s cheeks on one hand - not that he's been counting. Today is screwing with him.

 

"Welcome to Valentine's Day at Domino High School," he says quickly, to put an end to that train of thought. "The worst day of the school year."

 

The pharaoh looks a little concerned at this, and Yugi's not sure what kind of unpleasant Valentine's-related memories he has catalogued somewhere in the back of his head, and thus, the puzzle, so he quickly changes tack.

 

"Apart from exams. Although, arguably, those are less traumatic for Anzu."

 

"She does seem a little odd today. Is she alright?"

 

Yugi, for a moment, is sorely, sorely tempted to ask about their conversation this morning. He thinks better of it, though; the spirit can find out what's up with her for himself. He probably will, in fact, by the end of today. And it'll involve chocolate, and probably the school rooftop after hours.

 

"I'm not sticking around here if it gets dark after club activities have ended," he tells the spirit, who, for his part, at least acts like he doesn't know what that means.

 

"Partner?"

 

Yugi stares at his shoes for a second, contemplating sighing dramatically again to see if it feels better, or perhaps starting an official ranking board for the objective awfulness of Valentine's Days this far, just to see how this one measures up. Maybe third-worst, or second, depending on how the day ends.

 

The spirit leans over his shoulder like he does when they're playing an important duel, and then a little further still, until the tips of his bangs brush across Yugi's cheeks as phantom warmth. His eyes are dark, and warm, and crinkle slightly at the corners like they always do when he gets concerned.

 

"Partner?"

 

He's very, very close, and Yugi takes a little step back and a short breath and tells him all in a rush that yeah, Anzu's fine, it's just that half the school is in love with her at any given time. He starts walking again and the pharaoh follows, looking a little downtrodden. He needn't be, given he doesn't actually have to compete with half the school. But the vindictive, candy-stomping, rose-crushing part of Yugi that dies a little inside every time February 14th rolls around doesn't feel like telling him that. He'll figure it out for himself.

 

 

 

 

 

\----

 

 

 

 

 

It turns out there are prospective lovers on the school roof, where they also eat lunch sometimes, so they turn to hanging out on the skywalk, making snide comments and throwing sandwich crumbs at the occasional confessor and confessee below. Well, Jounouchi throws sandwich crumbs. Honda doesn't have a sandwich but wholeheartedly embraces the snide commenting (Yugi suspects the girl at the library might have accepted a confession from somebody else) and Yugi, who's trying not to sound bitter, only stares forlornly down at them and secretly agrees. Anzu, if she were here, would probably put a stop to at least the sandwich-crumb-throwing, but - as Yugi explains to the spirit - she feels responsible, and is out making the rounds to reject all the poor sods who have sent her expressions of affection.

 

Currently, a blonde-haired girl extends a bunch of roses to a rough-looking guy below the open windows of the skywalk.

 

Jounouchi is scandalised. "Roses? For a dude? Try a little harder, at least."

 

Honda nods sagely. "She loses to the girl with the toffee from before, for sure." He helps himself to some of what's probably chocolate he purloined from Anzu.

 

"She looks like she's making an effort," says the spirit, sounding sympathetic. Yugi makes a gesture that’s meant to mean 'tell them yourself' and passes over control. Jounouchi scoffs.

 

"She's invested, for sure." He peers further out the window, as though to better observe her heavy blush. "I just don't reckon it's gonna pay off for her. There have been better planned confessions."

 

"Out of ten?" asks Honda.

 

"Mmm… a seven."

 

"Seven?" asks the pharaoh, sounding a little distraught at Jounouchi’s easy judgement. He's probably rooting for the girl, Yugi thinks.

 

"Six point five. They're nice flowers," Jounouchi points out, to Honda's scepticism and the pharaoh's distress.

 

Below, the rough-looking guy shakes his head, and the girl drops the flowers and slaps him. The sound carries all the way up to their vantage point, echoing. Good for you, thinks Yugi half-heartedly.

 

"Oof, that's gonna leave a mark."

 

"Nice going, lady! And for the lucky winner..." Jounouchi pinches off a stray bit of salad and tosses it down, with expert marksmanship, to land on the guy's head. He picks it out of his hair, looking mystified. Jounouchi and Honda snicker.

 

"That was... the most violent one so far. Is there going to be a lot of this?" asks the pharaoh, drawing on what sounds like the full weight of the disbelief and mild horror he's been mentally accumulating since arriving in this twelve-hour stretch of hell.

 

Yugi tunes out Jounouchi's enthusiastic statistical analysis of number of slappings to ratio of rejections and slips, as much as he can while sort-of-incorporeal like this, to the floor, where he's splayed out a bit of the new sideboard for his deck. It is, predictably, hard to focus on relative card value through the haze of dejection and indifference that he's spent the day carefully curating.

 

Still, he reflects, tracing a slightly-transparent finger across a recently-acquired foil promo card, today isn't stacking up to be the worst. Not yet, anyways. He has his friends - and his deck with him now; before year before last, he used to avoid taking games to school around Valentine's. It was petty, but it was the same year - he cringes a little - he brought flowers for Anzu, and he was sitting alone, and some guy made a joke about him being _married to that puzzle_. And people laughed, which was really the bad part. Apart from being avoided by Anzu for the day, and even at that naive time he'd known what that meant. She'd still shouted at bullies for him, though, when the joke had caught on.

 

He had put the puzzle pieces away in their box and shoved it under his bed for a couple of months after that.

 

Yugi has to shake himself out of it. And that, he concludes, gives him the right to be a little dramatic about today. But thinking about it makes him feel sort of sick to his stomach, and sighing dramatically just seems childish with a little perspective.

 

He pushes the pharaoh back out when he moves to retreat into the puzzle, and sits with his back against the skywalk wall, staring at the cards laid out on the floor.

 

 

 

 

 

\----

 

 

 

 

 

Anzu actually arrives late to their free study period. Unlike Jounouchi, she doesn't trip over her desk sneaking in, and he looks at her with a vague sense of awe and newfound respect as she plops quietly down next to him. Yugi watches balefully on as the spirit emerges from the puzzle, as if on cue, to scrutinize her.

 

"This guy," she says, sounding exhausted, "would not take no for an answer." She places a tray of nice-looking store bought chocolates on the table and leans back in her chair, screwing up her eyes. "Eat."

 

Jounouchi makes grabby hands at the box until someone pushes it to him.

 

"Man," he says, mouth full, "he musta really liked you!"

 

"A little too much, I think."

 

"Must be hard," Yugi mumbles, sardonic, and only realises what he's said a moment later when he frantically wishes he could cram the words back into his mouth. Honda and Jounouchi tense up, fixing him with raised eyebrows and questioning expressions. Even the pharaoh turns to look at him, a little frown fixed on his jaw and eyebrows matted.

 

Anzu, for her part, has the grace to look a little guilty. She scrunches up her face and manoeuvres herself upright in her seat.

 

"Yeah, but Yugi, I just spent all of lunch and a little extra talking down guys who thought they were entitled to me because they've fancied me for more than a week and bought me chocolate." She raises an eyebrow pointedly. "If you wanna do it for me, be my guest."

 

And she has a point, of course she does. None of them are under any illusions about how she feels about Valentine's Day; that is, as soul-destroyingly bleak as Yugi does. In high school, she has sort of the same problem that Yugi did in junior high; she attracts all kinds of unwanted attention - the good sort - and he attracted all kinds of the bad. He feels a solidarity with her that he'll probably never be able to concede.

 

"Yeah. Sorry," Yugi says, and drops his gaze back to his notebook.

 

It's got very few actual notes in it from today, filled in around the margins with messages for someone nobody else can see and little sketches of Duel Monsters cards and tiny Millennium Puzzles.

 

Anzu rocks on her chair, lifting the front legs and letting them drop again with a thud. Jounouchi snorts, and Honda reaches across for a chocolate and one of Yugi's spare pens at the same time. The moment slips.

 

Only the pharaoh is still looking at him, brow furrowed in the same kind of deep, blank scrutiny that he uses on cards he's only just realised might be useful, and puzzles that he can't quite piece together. Yugi chances a glance up at him, and he stares back, unflinching; hovering slightly above where Yugi sits, his eyes deep, deep purple, darker black. Yugi's mouth goes dry.

 

The pharaoh looks, for a second, perplexed; then his face goes soft and slack and somehow sad, and he blinks and looks away.

 

"Yugi!”

 

"Huh?"

 

Honda has his notebook and Jounouchi, reaching across the table, is taking pictures of his notes with his phone.

 

"How the hell did you get the answer to the English bonus question?"

 

"Uh -” That's a good question.

 

 

 

 

 

\----

 

 

 

 

 

Anzu sits next to Yugi for last period, which is geography. Their teacher, ambling in to the classroom a couple minutes late, had taken one look at the chocolate-stained desks, teary-eyed and blushing countenances, sighed, and put on a documentary.

 

Despite his great and vested interest in the igneous rock formations of southern Ireland, Yugi struggles to supress a yawn. Across from him, Anzu watches the clock mounted above the projector restlessly. It's a rare sight to see from her, but he can understand the feeling. The lesson slows to a blur of creeping lethargy. He struggles against the urge to just put his head down on his desk and sleep, but they're in the front row, and for the sake of his grades he has to pretend to be paying at least a little bit of attention.

 

Anzu seems to get tetchy and wound up as the documentary wears on, though. She becomes a bundle of palpable nervous energy in Yugi's peripheral vision. At half an hour to go she bounces her heels silently under her desk; at twenty she takes to biting her lip and sneaking glances at the door.

 

With fifteen minutes left on the clock, she reaches down to retrieve a fresh pencil from her bag and with a flash of cold dread Yugi spots a flash of something heart-shaped and decidedly _not_ pink stowed carefully between her books. It’s more of a sort of boyish blue-purple.

 

He'd been right, of course. This Valentine's Day is moving up the rankings of terrible, awful Valentine's Days.

 

The lesson picks up its snail's pace and runs as Yugi stares blankly at the projector screen. His stomach is a pit, and his face feels tight; and this is a very dramatic way to be about a day that has ended neither in rejection by proxy, nor public humiliation, nor a hurried rush home to where he can lie, dejected, staring at the ceiling in a people-free, game-filled environment.

 

It is, of course, going to end in Anzu asking out the pharaoh. But that's fine.

 

It's fine. And really, he's over Anzu, he has been since the beginning of high school, and it's not like the spirit will stop being his friend, or his partner, or living in the puzzle that hangs against his chest. And he can hardly disassemble it and hide it under his bed now.

 

The bell rings.

 

Yugi jumps, Anzu zips shut her already-packed bag, and their teacher levers himself up from his chair and slowly sets about packing up the projector. The classroom begins to empty.

 

A deep, slow burn sets alight in Yugi's chest, something like dread or anxiety or closing your eyes and waiting for a nightmare to end as something awful creeps unceasingly towards you. The class clatters, muted, in the background.

 

A couple of stray petals drift across Yugi's desk. He looks at them, takes a deep breath, and thinks, _yeah, okay._ And Yugi hauls himself up, gives the spirit a little nudge, and starts packing up his things. His heart beats slow and his jaw knots up, and he dawdles at the classroom door until the spirit comes to stand beside him.

 

"Partner?"

 

"C'mon, let's get out of here."

 

"Are you alright?"

 

 

 

"...Yeah, I'm fine."

 

 

 

Anzu is waiting at the shoe lockers; in front of his, not hers. She doesn't quite notice him before he does her. He gives the pharaoh a little nudge.

 

"You take over for a bit."

 

 

 

 

 

\----

 

 

 

 

 

There's a nudge, and then a tug, and Yugi comes to on the school roof, alone. Really? The roof is kind of a cliché, he thinks. For a school with such a nice courtyard it's a shame nobody ever seems to use that to confess, instead. It's sort of windy up here, too. Yugi straightens out his battered hair and feels… numb.

 

The sun is setting, setting the clouds ablaze and catching on all the edges of the buildings, staining them pink; it's brisk and cold, the kind of winter sunset that's sometimes worth the stiff fingers and chapped lips of staying out to see it. Yugi takes a moment - everything else aside, maybe, perhaps, the worst Valentine's Day so far - and just looks.

 

Then he looks down, and casts about for the pharaoh. At first Yugi doesn't spot him; but on the second pass, there he is, curled diminutively but ever-gracefully on the concrete, up against the chain-link fence. His long, thin legs slide at odd angles against the floor, and even up here, after hours, looking for all the world like a delinquent skipping class for a smoke, Yugi wonders if he could ever abandon his elegance.

 

"What did I say about leaving before it got dark?"

 

The pharaoh glances up at him, an odd look on his face. Yugi is fairly certain that the cold can't actually touch him, but his fingers and cheeks are reddened, his hair wind-whipped to resemble Yugi's. There's …something about that.

 

The spirit makes no move to get up, so Yugi slides down next to him, leaving a little gap in between. The knot in his stomach is gone; he feels vacant.

 

"So," he asks, "how's your girlfriend?"

 

The pharaoh glances back at him, wide-eyed. A silence stretches between them. Dying light clings to the clean lines of the spirit's face, somehow sharper and narrower than his own.

 

"Sorry." The pharaoh’s voice is a deep murmur, barely-there against the whistle of the wind.

 

"Huh?"

 

"You liked Anzu."

 

Yugi wonders how long the pharaoh has had this insight, and where he got it from. He draws a long breath.

 

"I asked her out in junior high. Or, I tried. She didn't want to say no to me so she ran off. I mean, I got the message. We're friends now." Only Yugi's not entirely sure that explains the tightness of his chest, the pit returning to his stomach.

 

The spirit glances sharply at him.

 

“I was concerned about her.”

 

“Yeah, of course.”

 

“Partner, I mean – just for today.”

 

Yugi’s not entirely sure that covers the issue. It sure seems like a little more than concern, he thinks, and is grateful he didn’t voice it because of how bitter it sounds, even in his head.

 

The pharaoh shifts imperceptibly closer.

 

"Other things happened too, didn't they? That year in junior high."

 

Yugi looks away.

 

"There's a reason you hate today."

 

Yugi won't meet his gaze; he's not going to, he decides. He lets his head fall back against the chain-link fence with a soft clang.

 

"Embarrassing," he mumbles under his breath, and though he's trying not to look he still sees the pharaoh's eyes go soft.

 

 

Nobody says anything for a long moment.

 

 

"I said no."

 

"You _what_? What?" Yugi's endurance breaks and he scrambles all at once to face the spirit.

 

"Well, she didn't really ask, so much as tell me," the spirit expounds. He seems embarrassed. "She shared her chocolate, and we talked. She didn't think it was," he sucks in a little breath, and Yugi, for all his dejection and bitterness, has to bodily prevent himself from crawling over to him and trying to touch him for how human and fragile he looks in that moment. "She didn't think it was fair to ask, and she said she knew what the answer was anyway."

 

What, _what_ , what the hell.

 

"Was she right?"

 

The spirit looks down. "She was right."

 

He casts a sidelong glance at Yugi, and his eyes are deeper than before, even, and it's the kind of scrutiny that makes Yugi want to hide or implode or ask what, exactly, he's done to deserve this.

 

"Partner, come here?"

 

Yugi grazes his knees scuffling towards him. One hand fists, cautious, in the tiny, tenuous gap between them.

 

The pharaoh looks away briefly, expression perfectly neutral, and says "-sorry." Then he takes the chain of Yugi's puzzle, and he is so very close Yugi can see nothing except dark smudge of his eyelashes and the deeper, darker depths of his eyes, and he tugs.

 

They fall against each other and the chain-link fence and into the puzzle, the walls and stairs and iron doors of the pharaoh's soul room behind him and the bright light of Yugi's behind himself -

 

and there's a flash, and the corridor lights up and becomes cold, and windy, and they're back on the rooftop, another version of the rooftop, both of them solid and warm to the touch -

 

and the pharaoh leans in and kisses him.

 

 

 

(It is in this moment that Yugi realises several things.

 

One - that he may, in fact, be dumber than Jounouchi and Honda combined. Two - Anzu is, in fact, a wonderful friend. Three - that this is, potentially, his best Valentine's Day yet.)

 

 

 

The pharaoh's lips are firm and warm, his face hot against Yugi's, his hair in Yugi's eyes. He's still holding on to the puzzle, pulling Yugi in close, and Yugi fists both hands in the lapels of the spirit’s jacket and pulls him closer still.

 

When they pull apart the pharaoh's eyes are wide; he looks a little scared, a little surprised at his own daring. He searches Yugi's face. Yugi drops his lapels and grabs for his hands - ghostly again, his own stinging and frostbitten - and holds tight and just grins at him. He can feel his face redden but it's fine, it's all fine, it's actually, actually fine.

 

The pharaoh's eyes light up, and he smiles back.

 

They're definitely out of the puzzle again; the spirit is ghostly and translucent at the edges, and the wind stings fierce with cold as the sun begins to disappear beyond the horizon. Something huge and warm rises in him, and Yugi falls forward and envelops him in a hug, as tight as he can.

 

"You're the best," he manages, his head flattened to the pharaoh's shoulder.

 

The pharaoh squeezes tight. "You're underappreciated," he murmurs back, a smile in his voice.

 

Yugi laughs a little at that. Not for a long time, he thinks. Certainly not anymore.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> this was written in a day for Valentine's 2018! i hope you enjoyed this for the fluffy nothing it is.
> 
> \- i like the setting of Domino City in Japan, but this is not at all how Valentine's Day works over there; treat this as an unrealistic  
> fusion of cultures, i guess.
> 
> \- this is intended as a canonverse AU. canonically Yugi & co. are in their first year at high school; here they are ambiguously in  
> their second or third. by this point Yami would already have left, so, canonverse AU. if you'd prefer to imagine on the timeline, it fits into canon after Battle City and before DOMA.
> 
>  
> 
> thanks for reading!


End file.
